Portrait of a Huntsman

The title says man; the record says animal

A huntsman is a role and the title offers it as the subject of a portrait. The catalogue disagrees. This work carries no portrait heading of any kind — it is filed under Animal Art and Animal Art > Horse and nothing else. That is a real disagreement about what the picture is of, and it is exactly the kind this register exists to make visible. In sporting pictures the question is genuinely open: the horse is often the more valuable party, the one whose qualities the commission was about, and the man in the saddle can be its employee.

What the record holds

The date of creation is 1768 and the location is a private collection. No dimensions are recorded. Romanticism is the style term recorded and British the nationality attached to the painter. The measured colour family of the image is ochre.

One painter, thirty-one entries

Thirty-one of this painter's works are catalogued in this register — the largest group here by any hand, tied with one other. They run across the standing animal, the brood group, the hunt, the carriage team and the predator subject, which means his entries alone touch most of the functions this catalogue sorts by. That is a description of the holdings, not an assessment of the painter, and this register does not offer the second.